Too Long; Didn't Read: Ep 4. We've got our work cut out

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Speaker 11 Hello, lovely Friday Night Comedy people.

Speaker 9 I'm Catherine Beauhart, and I'm here to tell you that if you're in the UK, you can now listen to brand new episodes of my series, Too Long Didn't Read, and all the other Friday Night Comedy shows first on BBC Sounds, seven days earlier than anywhere else.

Speaker 11 Just go to BBC Sounds, subscribe to Friday Night Comedy, and I can't stress this enough, make sure that you have push notifications turned on.

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Speaker 19 Hello and welcome to Too Long Didn't Read, the show that like Trump in his Alaska meeting with Putin just about manages to sound informed while furiously googling stuff during the lunch break.

Speaker 22 I'm Catherine Bohart, and this is a show with so many angles on the news.

Speaker 23 It's like Nicola Sturgeon's haircut.

Speaker 1 Sharp, incisive, and timeless, yet confusingly sexy.

Speaker 22 Here on Too Long Didn't Read, we take a deep dive into one big news story with the help of comedians and an expert.

Speaker 12 But before that, what else has caught my eye this week?

Speaker 28 In big news for me and all the other messy bitches who live for drama, so that's me and the entire cast of the Archers, Taylor Swift is releasing a new album.

Speaker 13 Taylor announced she's releasing her 12th album at 12.12 on the 12th of August after posting a carousel of 12 photos on Instagram.

Speaker 30 Presumably, this is a play on the end of World War I, which happened on November 11th at 11am.

Speaker 28 And if in case you're wondering, yes, the album is the bigger story here.

Speaker 10 Former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has released her autobiography just in time for me to ignore it on my holiday in favour of a romanticy about a horny wizard.

Speaker 13 During her time as First Minister, Nicola oversaw the fallout from a fractious independence referendum, the aftermath of Brexit, and the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaker 28 So, naturally, what the pre-release interviews have focused on is a single sentence where she says she never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary.

Speaker 23 In several interviews, Sturgeon has been forced to confront the rumors that she's had, as the press put it, a torrid lesbian affair with a French diplomat.

Speaker 13 Now, the dictionary definition of torrid is both hot and dry.

Speaker 26 So not only was...

Speaker 20 So not only was the wording salacious, it was also, you'd hope, at least 50% inaccurate.

Speaker 29 U.S. Vice President J.D.

Speaker 17 Vance is on holiday in the Cotswolds, immediately raising the TWAT level from severe to critical.

Speaker 28 Trump and Putin met this week to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

Speaker 13 Trump has already called for Putin to agree to a ceasefire or face more US sanctions, but knowing these two, he was probably just flirting.

Speaker 10 The two leaders will be trying to repair what used to be a very close relationship, which recently soured when Trump discovered Putin had been seeing other world leaders behind his back.

Speaker 30 Mentioning no names, but Kim Jong-un is a slag, so.

Speaker 13 Their chosen meeting location, Alaska, is a state famous for a dessert, which, like Donald Trump himself, is icy cold on the inside and horribly scorched on the outside.

Speaker 32 In fact, Trump actually won't have any Russia experts in the room with him because he's fired them all in a drive to promote loyalty over experience, which to be fair sounds pretty Soviet to me.

Speaker 13 Doctors have said that blowing a conch could help sleep apnea.

Speaker 1 Could it?

Speaker 20 Or is this doctors getting annoyed that everyone else gets more sleep than them?

Speaker 13 Doctors said, and I'm pretty sure this is a quote, if we have to spend our nights hearing about how he just fell on it, you should have to listen to him play it.

Speaker 18 Can you imagine going back to a guy's house for a one-night stand and he gets his conch out?

Speaker 1 Unconscionable.

Speaker 10 The Liberal Democrats, finger on the pulse of the nation as ever, have noticed it's rather hot this week and have launched a campaign for the government to heat-proof the NHS by legislating to install aircon in hospitals and care homes.

Speaker 13 I mean, cool me old-fashioned, but I wonder if we should just start by legislating to install hospital beds and doctors and then work on keeping it a breezy 21 Celsius.

Speaker 26 I'm also pretty sure five minutes ago the elderly were complaining about having their winter fuel lands taken away.

Speaker 1 So are these guys too hot or too cold make up your mind

Speaker 17 i get why they want to talk about cooling down if we know anything about ed davies that this is the guy who loves an excuse to be on water when the lib dems are in charge when

Speaker 1 sorry

Speaker 26 when the lib dems are in charge your gp will be fully empowered to prescribe you a combo of beta blockers and 20 minutes on a banana boat

Speaker 10 and their suggestions are to be fair more reasonable than that of the government whose guidelines in response to the current heat wave include advice like sleep on the ground floor avoid fizzy drinks, and I kid you not, delete old emails because data centers use up a lot of water.

Speaker 28 So, Britain, I want you to know that I too will be wiping my browser history for the planet.

Speaker 17 But this week's big discovery is that Britain isn't working.

Speaker 16 And I mean, we have been saying the same thing across the Irish Sea for a while now.

Speaker 31 Figures from the Office for National Statistics released this week show that unemployment has now reached a four-year high and that the number of job vacancies has fallen by 44,000 over the last three months.

Speaker 28 The news comes at a particularly bad time for 18-year-olds across England, Wales and Northern Ireland who received their A-level results this week.

Speaker 17 Subjects like business studies and economics saw a huge rise in popularity so at least the kids will know all the technical terms they need to explain why they're still living with their parents.

Speaker 19 It's supply and demand moms.

Speaker 26 Please stay out of my room slash office slash breakout space.

Speaker 29 Economic uncertainty, AI and higher interest rates are all contributing to an environment which some people have argued makes it the hardest time ever to be a young person.

Speaker 13 People who have forgotten the jeans under dresses trend in the mid-naughties, I imagine.

Speaker 13 Beleaguered Gen Zs are turning to alternative career paths, with 2024 Love Island star Patsy Field going so far as to say, it's an embarrassment to work nine to five in this day and age.

Speaker 13 Instead, Patsy is planning to relocate to Australia, where the UK has always sent its best and brightest.

Speaker 10 With me to try to figure out what's going on is a man whose job it is to write an imaginary diary every week, so presumably he's given some thought to unemployment.

Speaker 26 It's the Times broadcaster and journalist, Hugo Rifkind, everybody.

Speaker 1 Hi, Hugo. Oh, hello.
Hi, how are you? I'm good.

Speaker 14 Hugo, I'm trying to figure out what the situation is with unemployment.

Speaker 36 When my dad tells me I should try to get a proper job,

Speaker 24 how legitimately can I currently respond, but that's actually really hard right now.

Speaker 1 Hmm. Well, look, so employment is, it is a four-year high, but sort of historically speaking, it's quite low.
It was like a lot. In 1984, it was 12%, for example.
It's now about four-ish, 4.7%.

Speaker 1 Even when I was last job hunting in about early 2000s, it was about 6%. Still bad if it happens to you.

Speaker 1 It's like if you get hit by a bus, it's not much consolation if someone says, this hardly happens to anyone. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But unemployment is not the same thing as joblessness, right?

Speaker 1 That's the distinction. So joblessness is just people who aren't in work.
And about a fifth of adults aren't in work.

Speaker 1 A fifth of adults aren't in work. They're not classed as unemployed because they're not looking for work.

Speaker 1 They might be on benefits, they might just not want to work. It's the inactivity rate, we call it.

Speaker 1 But even the inactivity rate at about a fifth, it's been sort of historically 20-25%, same sort of region since about 1971. If you've not worked consistently since 1971, well done.
And

Speaker 1 are you, Prince Andrew?

Speaker 1 Some of them will be working, though, because they'll be working in the kind of grey economy, the illicit economy, cash in hand.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 21 And also, presumably, some of those people are doing like work that we don't value, but still nonetheless is real work, like domestic labor and

Speaker 1 parenting. Call that work.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 1 Hugo, you're speaking to a front row of women.

Speaker 1 I mean, absolutely. And it is and has historically been difficult.
Well, they shouldn't be considered unemployed. Yeah.
Because they're not, but they're also not paid.

Speaker 1 What's changed, though, is although that big kind of chunk of economically inactive people has always been more or less the same size, or at least sort of for a long time it's been about the same size, the people who are in it are different now.

Speaker 1 Say more. Right, so it used to be fairly universally spread, or indeed it was more likely to be women than men, because men were more likely to work than women.

Speaker 1 These days men were only very slightly more likely to work than women. But you're quite likely, much more likely, increasingly likely, to be workless for whatever reason if you're over 50.

Speaker 1 Post-pandemic, there's been a huge rise in people over 50 who are workless.

Speaker 14 Because Because everyone was like,

Speaker 27 I actually love pottery in my garden, or because, and we're like, just took early retirement, or because it's actually a totally different environment in which to get a job.

Speaker 1 It's all of those things.

Speaker 1 Also, a lot more of them are ill and on benefits of some sort, which means they're classed as workless as well.

Speaker 1 Also, though, there's been a really, really marked rise in young people outside employment, NEETs, not in education, employment, or training.

Speaker 1 Again, historically, it's not that high, NEETs at the moment. They were higher in 2012.
There were more NEETs, but it's gone up like a ski jump since the pandemic.

Speaker 24 Why is that?

Speaker 1 Who knows, really?

Speaker 1 I mean, I guess it's because the number of jobs that there are around for these people have sort of been in decline. They've been harder to get.

Speaker 1 It was about 600,000 people were classed as NEETs in about in 2020, 2021. It's now I think it's a bit over a million.

Speaker 10 Wow, that's a huge jump.

Speaker 1 That's a big jump.

Speaker 21 And is that because graduate levels specifically those jobs are difficult to get?

Speaker 1 Graduate recruitment, like really, really plunging, down 33% in a year, the number of jobs available for graduates.

Speaker 1 But it's also much harder to get other jobs now if you're not a graduate.

Speaker 1 So there's this big trend in like hospitality jobs, things like that, things that traditionally wouldn't necessarily be a graduate job,

Speaker 1 demanding like a 2-2, for example.

Speaker 1 But the big, I mean, the big traditional graduate jobs, the milk-round jobs, KPMG, PWC, Deloitte, EY, they hired, I think, a thousand fewer people last year than the year before.

Speaker 21 Oh, my goodness. Wow, so I assume Gilet sales are also down.

Speaker 14 Wait, so you can't, it's not like you can just say who your dad is and that you went to Cambridge anymore.

Speaker 1 Alas not. Not anymore.
Devastating.

Speaker 23 Which jobs, are there particular jobs other than graduate jobs that are harder to get, any that are easier? Who are the winners and losers?

Speaker 1 There are a lot of jobs that are in sort of sharpish decline. Jobs that are being impacted by AI are in sharpish decline.
There was a...

Speaker 27 What are those jobs?

Speaker 19 Because it feels like they change.

Speaker 24 Every time I read an article about AI.

Speaker 1 Any job that requires amassing information and using it, which has always been the bedrock of the middle classes, things that are protected and regulated, like doctors and lawyers, you're going to be okay.

Speaker 1 Things like accountants, you're probably in quite a lot of trouble. There were stories in the paper this week about the jobs that they reckon are going to be most resistant to AI.

Speaker 1 Being a vet, apparently.

Speaker 1 Okay. Because your dog doesn't want a robot's finger up its bottom.

Speaker 13 You said that like the rest of us do, but okay.

Speaker 30 Sorry about my dog, he's so picky.

Speaker 1 It's also worse for men.

Speaker 1 Men are. Is it? Yes.
What a shame your smile won't come across on radio.

Speaker 1 There is a he-session.

Speaker 1 What does that mean? A lot of the better-paid professions, the junior ranks, are increasingly dominated by women.

Speaker 1 Men are finding it harder and harder to get those jobs, which means it's going to be really, really hard for white men to keep ruling the world. But you know what? I reckon we'll find a way.

Speaker 36 I reckon you'll find a way too.

Speaker 10 But then once you get a job.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 14 Plane sailing?

Speaker 1 No. There's this weird double thing going on, which is employers want more and more and more and more.

Speaker 31 What is this notion of like nine to nine that I'm hearing of?

Speaker 1 Was it nine nine six? It's this idea that what your employer wants is for you to work from nine to nine six days a week.

Speaker 34 Okay, Dolly Parton's gonna have to write a new song.

Speaker 1 Yes. That's a shame.
So Angela Rayna, before the election, started talking about the right to switch off. Right?

Speaker 1 Which was going to make it illegal for employers to contact people by phone or by email outside of working hours. She said that was going to be in the manifesto.
manifesto.

Speaker 1 It wasn't in the manifesto, perhaps because she thought about it and then wanted to email somebody about it to put it in the manifesto.

Speaker 1 But it was outside working hours and then she forgot. But so it's not there, not happening.

Speaker 13 Isn't there something that they have this policy in France, right?

Speaker 1 They absolutely have this policy in France. And in fact, before coming on today,

Speaker 1 I called somebody in France to find out more about it, but they were at lunch.

Speaker 29 Okay, amazing. Thank you so much, Hugo Riffrian.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

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Speaker 26 Well, we've heard all about the job market from a journalist, but what about a man who's never worked a day in his life?

Speaker 14 It's Sunil Patel, everyone.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I mean,

Speaker 1 that's not fair. Oh?

Speaker 1 I'm a very hardworking guy. Okay.
All right. Yeah?

Speaker 1 No, no.

Speaker 1 Okay, this sounds like a joke, but before I became a stand-up comedian, my last job was managing a Christmas grotto.

Speaker 10 Does that make you Santa, or is there someone above them?

Speaker 1 I was actually Santa's boss. Santa's grotto is actually surprisingly top-heavy.

Speaker 1 A bit like the NHS.

Speaker 26 Okay, well, it just goes to show it's a cutthroat job market out there.

Speaker 23 Isn't it, Sunil?

Speaker 26 What's your take on all this?

Speaker 1 It is, Catherine, and that's why I've got some rather bad news, I'm afraid. Oh? The BBC wants you to reapply for your job.

Speaker 16 Sorry, just to check in, they want me to reapply to be Catherine Bohart on Too Long Didn't Read with Catherine Bohart.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 1 They've been running the numbers and they think it'd be cheaper to have this whole thing written by ChatGPT and presented by a hologram of Scylla Black.

Speaker 19 Who's doing the interview?

Speaker 1 Me.

Speaker 26 You? Why you?

Speaker 1 Because I'm a man. All right, that's how the system works.
Me and the head of comedy agreed it last night when we were out at the strip club. Lads, lads, lads.
That's pros.

Speaker 1 Look, in a competitive job market, you've got to take advantage of the old boys' network, okay? Anyway, look, I'd love to chat, but I'm extremely hungover from all the shots.

Speaker 1 Now, first question, what are your relevant skills for the job?

Speaker 26 I love current affairs.

Speaker 27 I have some broadcast experience.

Speaker 10 Most important, I mean, I'm already hosting the show.

Speaker 1 Arrogant?

Speaker 1 That's the first note. All right, next question.
What are your feelings on Jason Statham? Is that relevant? Well, I need to know if you're a good workplace fit.

Speaker 1 You know, are you going to come and watch Crank 2 with the boys, get a load of tango in? Or are you going to be all like, oh, I want to watch Bridget Jones?

Speaker 29 What is wrong with Bridget Jones?

Speaker 1 Here she goes.

Speaker 1 That's exactly what I'm talking about. Also, don't you think your voice is too high-pitched for Radio 4?

Speaker 1 What is this? A show for dogs?

Speaker 1 I knew this would happen. I knew it would happen.

Speaker 1 I wrote it. Don't worry.

Speaker 24 I wasn't just scribbling away on the bus here.

Speaker 1 I wasn't.

Speaker 1 What is this? A show for dogs?

Speaker 30 That is so offensive, Sunil. Wow.

Speaker 1 Potential loose cannon.

Speaker 1 Okay, it's time for the team building section. On the count of three, I want you to leap into the audience and crowdsurf to the back of the room.

Speaker 30 I'm obviously not going to do that. We have not done a risk assessment.
Someone could die.

Speaker 1 Not a team player.

Speaker 1 I should tell you that as well well as a holographic Scylla Black, there is another candidate in the running for this job.

Speaker 36 It's you, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Well, I'm not at liberty to say. All I can say is it's a suave wild man of the UK comedy scene, known for his intense sensual allure.

Speaker 1 Joel Donald. That's rude.
Now, have you brought any references?

Speaker 26 No, I didn't know the interview was happening.

Speaker 30 Can I ask someone in the audience to be my referee?

Speaker 1 Can you vouch that Catherine isn't a criminal, a troublemaker, or someone who labels her milk in the workplace kitchen? I'm a factor.

Speaker 1 All right, whatever. Now,

Speaker 1 for the final section of the interview, I would like you to give a three-second presentation about why you, Catherine Bohart, are the best woman for the job.

Speaker 32 Okay, um, I'm hardworking and I'm passionate and I'm curious.

Speaker 1 All right, all right, I don't need to know about your personal life. That's your time up.

Speaker 1 Now, okay, Catherine, thanks for your interest in the role of being Catherine Bohart on Too Long Didn't Read with Catherine Bohart. We'll be in touch.
But did I get it?

Speaker 1 Well, let's call the rest of this episode a trial shift.

Speaker 26 Thank you, my colleague and arch nemesis, Sunil. Patel, everyone!

Speaker 26 I honestly didn't even know I worked for him.

Speaker 17 But okay, good to know.

Speaker 28 They say, be the change you want to see in the world.

Speaker 13 So we've given a third person a job to talk to us tonight.

Speaker 33 Please welcome this evening's expert, the wonderful Isabel Barrick.

Speaker 32 Isabel is the Financial Times working at Brand covering the workplace management and the future of work.

Speaker 23 And her book, The Future-Proof Career, comes out in paperback next week.

Speaker 32 Hello. Hi.

Speaker 22 Welcome. I'm glad you're here.

Speaker 13 Hugo got us worried, I would say.

Speaker 10 Hope you're here with more happy news. More upbeat news.

Speaker 19 Yeah?

Speaker 13 I'm really sorry to talk about unemployment figures behind their back, but they seem all over the place.

Speaker 34 They are all over the place. And actually, the real numbers are quite low.
About 7% of the population, working-age population, is on long-term sick. And I think that's a huge issue.

Speaker 34 It's about 3.8 million on long-term sick.

Speaker 36 Are they trying to figure out why people are on long-term sick?

Speaker 34 Yeah, and actually, if we're talking about being out of work for younger people, it's increasingly mental health conditions. And that has gone, it's huge since the pandemic.

Speaker 13 Is there any connection between young people having to live with their parents longer and being depressed?

Speaker 34 I think the pandemic had a lot to do with that.

Speaker 34 As we all know, a lot of people spent a lot of time in their bedrooms.

Speaker 21 What degree of joblessness or the lack of job vacancies is down to AI occupying jobs?

Speaker 23 And is that threat for the future or is it happening already?

Speaker 34 It's happening already, but probably we don't know the full extent. So there's a lot of other stuff.

Speaker 34 So it's what we would call a perfect storm of stuff happening in the world at the moment, like, you know, with geopolitics, economic uncertainty, obviously the AI, stuff like society's polarizing.

Speaker 34 So if you're a human who's uncertain, as we all are, think about how you behave when you're uncertain. Like, you may not embark on that bathroom renovation or house purchase.
You hold off.

Speaker 34 You're uncertain. It's the same with graduate recruitment.
The leaders are uncertain, they don't know what's going to happen, so they're cutting the graduate recruitment.

Speaker 34 Yeah, we're behaving like humans do, but actually, it's going to have a massive knock-on effect in about, say, five years' time.

Speaker 34 When you haven't, you're not building the workforce, you're going to have a massive gap, basically.

Speaker 21 Okay, so on the expectation that AI might take jobs, we're creating less jobs for fear that those jobs won't be as necessary anymore.

Speaker 34 I mean, AI will take jobs, but we really don't know, actually.

Speaker 34 I cannot tell you how much hype there is about AI.

Speaker 34 I get hundreds of emails a week about AI, and the reality of the billions and billions and billions that's going into AI is not matched by the reality in workplaces.

Speaker 35 Okay, so the people who aren't working, not people who are in long sick, but people who are not working, who are they?

Speaker 24 How are they managing?

Speaker 34 So there's a lot more what we might call entrepreneurial activity. And a lot of Gen Z want to work for themselves.
So they don't want to work for the man. as my son would say.

Speaker 34 They want to sort out their own lives. And I think the lack of trust that people have in governments, it's mirrored in the workplace.
So people don't trust institutions.

Speaker 34 Many fewer Gen Zs want corporate jobs. There are fewer corporate jobs to have, so that's just as well.
But actually, generationally, they're not as interested.

Speaker 34 You know, I was desperate to get a job and a pension because I'm quite boring. So it's actually good that they've got more imagination.
So they might be side hustling on Etsy.

Speaker 1 They might be running one or two. I'm going to go ahead and do it with Etsy.

Speaker 14 I'm sorry. Just think it's skills that should have been bullied out of you as a child.
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 I am sorry.

Speaker 14 So, okay, so they're all trying to side hustle, which isn't a dance move.

Speaker 34 I mean, there are people who are doing more than one job. So, you know, one of the aspects of this we haven't talked about is the polygamous people.
So, they've got...

Speaker 1 Yeah, there are...

Speaker 26 But let's get into it.

Speaker 1 There are people who've got literally two or three full-time jobs.

Speaker 24 Okay, we're using that word differently.

Speaker 25 Multiple jobs like...

Speaker 34 It's a stitching together of a career rather than getting someone to offer it to you on a plate.

Speaker 34 It does seem mad that post-pandemic, when it turned out we could all just work from home, that we have all just been like, well, back to the way things were, and they didn't expect us to have any feelings about that.

Speaker 34 So something like 85% of managers think that their staff are not working hard when they're at home. And 85% of staff think they work incredibly hard when they're at home.
So that's a really big gap.

Speaker 34 So if you're talking about the four-day week, to a manager who is measuring productivity and bums on seats, that's a massive drop.

Speaker 34 But actually, you should be measuring output, and you can do the same output in four days that you you can do in five if you're efficient. And actually, that has, you know, lots of people do.

Speaker 13 Presumably, we're talking about Gen Z hopping from job to job.

Speaker 10 Is the shift purely generational?

Speaker 23 And if it's generational, is it permanent?

Speaker 34 Yeah, I think it's permanent. It's not, actually, we can learn a lot.

Speaker 34 I think those of us who are older in workplaces learn a lot from Gen Z's coming up because, you know, we sat there and took terrible treatment from all forms.

Speaker 34 It's not you, Catherine, if you've never had an office job. But you know, we had terrible treatment.

Speaker 13 My boss is a nightmare.

Speaker 15 It's just that she's me.

Speaker 1 Hell, hell.

Speaker 34 So we can learn from, you know, they don't take it.

Speaker 14 Does that mean essentially they're more empowered to advocate for themselves?

Speaker 1 Yes, they are empowered.

Speaker 31 How do words like boundaries play in a corporate environment?

Speaker 34 Well, they used to mean a fence, but now

Speaker 1 it doesn't.

Speaker 34 Now it means I work the hours that I'm contracted to work and no more. And actually, it's quite a divisive word in workplaces.
The use of the word boundary is,

Speaker 34 I hesitate to say, triggering for some older managers.

Speaker 21 Fascinating. Okay, amazing.
I love the idea that Gen Z have taken one look at the concept of a job and labelled it gaslighting.

Speaker 12 It's now your turn.

Speaker 23 If you have questions for me or for Isabel, more importantly, the expert, then we'd love to hear them.

Speaker 1 Does anyone have a question?

Speaker 18 Hello, what's your name?

Speaker 25 Hi, I'm Michaela. I'm 23 years old, so I've just completed an acting program.

Speaker 25 My question is, do you think you even need a degree or a university in this day and age to be successful?

Speaker 34 Do you need a degree to be successful? No, absolutely not. And in fact, one of the things that we need more of in this country is apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships.

Speaker 34 They're incredibly hard to get. It's actually probably harder than to get into Oxbridge or a top university to get an apprenticeship or a degree apprenticeship.

Speaker 14 No one who went to Oxbridge is going to want to hear you say that.

Speaker 34 It's just because that's the future. We need more people who have got those skills.
And if you've done drama, you've got amazing people skills.

Speaker 31 I don't know. I know a lot of actors with horrible people skills.

Speaker 34 Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 18 Hello, what's your name?

Speaker 13 Catherine. Hi, Catherine.
It's a solid name, Catherine.

Speaker 21 Off to go. What's your question?

Speaker 1 So, like, unemployment statistics have been brought up a lot.

Speaker 37 Is there any real geographical bearing on those?

Speaker 37 Because, just from young people that I know, people who live in more rural areas are struggling to find jobs because there's no viable opportunities near them, they can't get to anywhere.

Speaker 37 But then, people in cities are struggling to find jobs because they're competing with so many more people for them.

Speaker 34 Yeah, it's a very neat summation of the problem, indeed. Yes, and in fact, there have been some big studies done about long-term unemployment, even in cities.

Speaker 34 And actually, a lot of it is to do with the fact that people can't get to jobs. So the buses may run at not the time when you need to get to your job if you live in a rural area.

Speaker 34 So we need a lot more joined-up thinking about public transport, for example. That's one thing.
But a lot of money is going to the rural economy.

Speaker 34 For example, the government is trying to set up AI clusters.

Speaker 34 There's one, the first one's going to be around Oxford, I think, and there's one in Scotland.

Speaker 34 So maybe at some point, really great tech jobs will roll out in other parts of the country that are not London, Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, where the tech clusters are currently.

Speaker 34 There's a tech cluster in Dublin. Absolutely cluster.
It's like a tech opalis.

Speaker 15 Hello, what's your name?

Speaker 29 Hi, I'm Daisy. Hi, Daisy.
What's your question?

Speaker 38 So I kind of wondered what the incentive is for the workload population that you're talking about, particularly like if people are out of work because of their mental health and also because they don't think it's worth it.

Speaker 38 So, what's the point of them working now?

Speaker 34 At its best, work does give you a sense of purpose. It helps you to discover parts of your identity you perhaps didn't know.

Speaker 34 Leading people can be a really interesting thing to do and very rewarding to help other people in their careers.

Speaker 34 But you're right, for a lot of people, then there are big questions about do I want to work? But I think people underplay how good work can be in our lives.

Speaker 13 Where else did you have your affairs?

Speaker 23 Do you know?

Speaker 23 Okay, thank you so much to Isabel Berrick, everyone.

Speaker 26 And let's welcome back, Hugo Risky's, everyone.

Speaker 1 Hugo.

Speaker 26 Hello. What have you learned? What have we learned? What do you think? Do you know what?

Speaker 1 I think we've learnt it's not awful on paper, only in reality.

Speaker 1 And that um and that's not even a joke, because that makes it really, really hard to identify what the problem is to tell government you know, what they ought to do.

Speaker 1 I think we've also learned it's a really good idea to have not been born any later than 1987.

Speaker 36 Do you have a hero of the week?

Speaker 1 Have you heard of the Pretend to Work Company in China?

Speaker 21 No, but it sounds like my street going.

Speaker 1 The Pretend to Work Company in China is this relatively new organization that's set up. And what it is, it's an office, a beautiful, lovely office where anyone would love to work.
No one works there.

Speaker 1 People pay to go there and pretend they work there. Right? It's kind of like we work, but we don't work.

Speaker 1 Well, they do this for a feeling of self-worth and also to stay in touch with what it is like to work in an office. It's all the fun of a grinding office job, but without the money.

Speaker 13 Well, before the show, we asked our audience what dream benefit from an employer would mean that they give total employee loyalty. My favorite one is a psychiatrist couch with a psychiatrist.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 27 Enforced spa days and a four-day week.

Speaker 23 Somebody else has written drugs, yo.

Speaker 26 Honestly, I didn't expect from this crowd, but shout out to that person.

Speaker 36 Bottomless ice cream. Have you ever had that at a job?

Speaker 1 I don't know what that means. Right.

Speaker 13 I just remember that you've probably never had a period.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 26 I was like, why don't you? Okay, yeah.

Speaker 29 Unlimited free Haribo.

Speaker 32 That feels like a cheap hire.

Speaker 1 Yep, sure.

Speaker 13 Or, other end of the extreme, free use of a private jet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, see, I'm not an employer, but if I was, I'd employ the Haribo guy. Yeah, I get that.

Speaker 26 I really get that.

Speaker 1 And then, oh, this one's sad.

Speaker 31 More than 20-minute lunch break in a 10-hour day and nothing thrown at my head.

Speaker 20 Brackets from a recent ex-teacher.

Speaker 22 Well, on that note, whose Instagram should we be lurking?

Speaker 1 Nobody's Instagram, you fool. Get on LinkedIn.

Speaker 10 Well, this has been Too Long Didn't Read, the show that's fun but noosie, like the back of a toilet stall in your local spoons.

Speaker 27 And thank you at home for listening. See you next week.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 1 Too Long Didn't Read was written and hosted by Catherine Bohart with Hugo Riffkin, Sunil Patel and Isabel Berry. It was also written by Georgie Flynn, Madeline Brettingham and Christina Riggs.

Speaker 1 The producer was Alison Vernon Smith. It was a mighty bunny production for BBC Radio 4.

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Phil Wang and this is a podcast to podcast trailer for a different podcast than this podcast that you've listened to or are going to listen to.

Speaker 1 But nonetheless, I'm talking about another podcast that you should also definitely listen to.

Speaker 1 The podcast I'm talking about is Comedy of the Week, which takes choice episodes from BBC sitcoms, sketch shows, podcasts, and panel shows, including my own show, Unspeakable, and puts them all into one podcast.

Speaker 1 Maybe I'll trail this podcast on that podcast. Who's to say? I'll do what I like.
Listen to Comedy of the Week now on BBC Sounds. Podcast.

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Speaker 8 Sucks!

Speaker 6 The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

Speaker 7 We demand to be home. Winner, best score.
We demand to be seen. Winner, best book.
We demand to be quality.

Speaker 5 It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Speaker 6 Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Speaker 7 Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.